Carey never would have thought that sharing some pastries with Tina could unravel something so monumental.
"But you can't determine we're mother and daughter just from a few pastries, right?" Carey asked, still grappling with the flood of new information.
She had so many questions. If she really was Carey, then why was she at Vance Castle? How did she become Flavia Cartwright? What on earth happened twenty years ago?
As if reading her mind, Caitlin answered the unspoken questions. "I'm guessing you want to know what happened to separate you from us for all these years, right?"
Caitlin then told her about the car crash two decades ago. When Carey heard that her daughter had been only three months old when she was torn from her parents, she felt a crushing weight on her heart, as if someone were squeezing it tight.
"After the crash, my dad fell into a coma and was bedridden for twenty years. You disappeared completely—no sign of you, alive or dead. My grandfather took me in and raised me..."
As she spoke, Caitlin took out her phone and pulled up a photograph. "Look at this. This is a family portrait of the three of us. Dad said I had just turned one month old."
The photo showed a happy family of three. Carey was holding a baby Caitlin in her arms, while Stuart Gonzales had his hand resting on his wife's shoulder. All three were smiling blissfully.
Seeing the woman in the photo—a woman who looked exactly like her—Carey froze, her eyes wide with shock.
Caitlin pointed to the image. "This is you. This is my dad, Stuart. And this is me."
She swiped to the next picture.
"This is a photo of just you."
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